Senior Finance Manager - 9 Month Fixed Term Contract

About us

We are champions of rail, inspired to build a greener, more sustainable future of travel. Trainline enables millions of travellers to find and book the best value tickets across carriers, fares, and journey options through our highly rated mobile app, website, and B2B partner channels. 

Great journeys start with Trainline 🚄 

Now Europe’s number 1 downloaded rail app, with over 125 million monthly visits and £5.9 billion in annual ticket sales, we collaborate with 270+ rail and coach companies in over 40 countries. We want to create a world where travel is as simple, seamless, eco-friendly and affordable as it should be. 

Today, we're a FTSE 250 company driven by our incredible team of over 1,000 Trainliners from 50+ nationalities, based across London, Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Edinburgh and Madrid. With our focus on growth in the UK and Europe, now is the perfect time to join us on this high-speed journey. 

The role

We’re looking for a Senior Finance Manager to join our Financial Control team on a 9 month fixed term contract. This is a hands-on, technically focused role for someone with strong judgement, a practical mindset, and a genuine interest in improving how finance processes work.

Reporting to the Head of Finance, you’ll play a key role in ensuring our financial reporting is accurate, well-controlled and stands up to scrutiny. While the role has no direct line management responsibility, it does involve leading through influence and working closely with finance colleagues and key stakeholders to provide challenge, guidance and support.

A core focus of the role will be coordinating verification activities for our Annual Report and Half-Year Report, alongside responsibility for balance sheet reconciliations, reviewing management accounts, and embedding sensible, pragmatic controls. You’ll also be involved in a range of ad-hoc projects and process improvements as our business continues to evolve.

This role will suit someone who enjoys getting into the detail, working collaboratively, and quietly making finance processes more robust, efficient and reliable.

What you’ll do

• Lead and coordinate verification activities for the Annual Report and Half-Year Report, working closely with key stakeholders to ensure accuracy, consistency and appropriate supporting evidence.

• Act as a subject matter expert for external reporting and controls, providing constructive challenge and guidance to ensure outputs are robust

• Drive continuous improvement in balance sheet processes, including ownership of key reconciliations, working capital analysis, review standards and supporting documentation, with a clear understanding of the impact on the financial statements.

• Partner with the management accounting team to identify, design and embed pragmatic process improvements that strengthen controls, reduce manual effort and improve overall quality.

• Maintaining a good working relationship with the external auditors to ensure audits are conducted efficiently and effectively

• Support the development and maintenance of a strong internal control environment, ensuring processes are well-documented, consistently applied and stand up to audit scrutiny.

• Encourage good practice across the finance function through coaching, knowledge-sharing and hands-on support, leading through influence.

• Proactively identify emerging risks or areas of complexity in reporting and balance sheet management, escalating and addressing issues in a timely and thoughtful way.

• Support and lead ad-hoc finance and reporting projects, bringing structure, rigour and a practical approach to delivery.

What we’re looking for

• ACA / ICAS / ACCA (or equivalent) qualified accountant with some post qualification experience, either from practice or with industry experience in a financial control or group reporting role.

• Demonstrable experience preparing or reviewing (for example through audit) publicly listed Annual Reports and Accounts.

• Strong experience with balance sheet reconciliations, with a clear understanding of what “good” looks like in terms of quality, timeliness, documentation and review.

• Practical experience designing, reviewing or improving balance sheet processes to ensure they are robust, well-controlled and fit for purpose.

• Proven experience coaching and mentoring junior team members.

• Excellent time management and ownership, with the ability to manage your own workload and meet deadlines.

• Comfortable working autonomously and willing to roll up your sleeves to solve problems.

• Strong MS Office skills, particularly Excel.

More information:

Enjoy fantastic perks like private healthcare & dental insurance, a generous work from abroad policy, 2-for-1 share purchase plans, an EV Scheme to further reduce carbon emissions, extra festive time off, and excellent family-friendly benefits. 

We prioritise career growth with clear career paths, transparent pay bands, personal learning budgets, and regular learning days. Jump on board and supercharge your career from day one! 

We're operate a hybrid model to work and ask that Trainliners work from the office a minimum of 60% of their time over a 12-week period. We also have a 28-day Work from Abroad policy.

Our values represent the things that matter most to us and what we live and breathe everyday, in everything we do: 

• 💭 Think Big - We're building the future of rail 

• ✔️ Own It - We focus on every customer, partner and journey 

• 🤝  Travel Together - We're one team 

• ♻️ Do Good - We make a positive impact 

We know that having a diverse team makes us better and helps us succeed. And we mean all forms of diversity - gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, nationality and diversity of thought. That's why we're committed to creating inclusive places to work, where everyone belongs and differences are valued and celebrated.

Interested in finding out more about what it's like to work at Trainline? Why not check us out on LinkedIn, Instagram and Glassdoor!